


Sunshine

by wastingyourarrows



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Skiing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28316940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastingyourarrows/pseuds/wastingyourarrows
Summary: Theon wasn’t sure if he should come on the yearly Stark family ski trip, but he ends up happy he did.
Relationships: Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: Theonsa Yuletide Gift Exchange





	Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitkatkaylie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatkaylie/gifts).



For as long as Theon could remember, Sansa had flown on skis. Her ponytail would escape her helmet and trace a red ribbon down the mountain behind her zigzags and jumps and sharpest of turns. The first time Robb had made him come on the family’s March ski trip he’d seethed with frustration watching Robb’s kid sister flying down the hill almost effortlessly while he, a star swimmer for fuck’s sake, tripped and tangled himself in his skis time after time.   
Now he was competent enough to watch the endless sky and mountains instead of his feet when he skied, and he could even manage some modest jumps, but she still inspired awe in him. He didn’t resent her for it now; he had long since accepted the preternatural Stark ability to excel in the snow.   
By chance he reached the bottom of the mountain just in time for her to see him from her spot in line for the lift.   
“Theon!” she waved a gloved hand at him, a pole dangling from its strap around her wrist. He used his own poles to push himself over to where she stood and she led him by the elbow onto the lift. “How’s it going?” she asked as they watched the ground shrink beneath them.  
“Great!” he grinned. He took a deep breath of the crisp mountain air. The familiarity between them wasn’t new, but he didn’t take it for granted. It had taken a long time for him to become anything but ‘Robb’s annoying friend who always smells like cigarettes’, and even longer to reach the ‘worth sharing a chairlift with’ level of Sansa Stark’s carefully curated social circle.   
“Have you been all the way to the top yet?” she asked.   
He gulped. “Not yet.”  
The ‘top’ was at the very peak of the highest mountain bordering their Banff resort. The only way down from it was a double black diamond, and it always made Theon’s stomach fall when he looked too long at the skiers drop off the edge and try to maneuver the insanely steep slope.   
“Do you want to?” she asked. He looked at her intently. Her eyes were hidden by her goggles, and all he saw above her wide smile was his own face reflected in them.   
He watched himself say “why not?” and before he knew it he was getting off the chairlift halfway up the mountain and getting onto the second lift, that went all the way to the top.   
“Want any pointers?” Sansa asked.   
“Sure, how do I not die?”  
She laughed at that, and her little puffs of breath froze in front of her face. “Take it slow, you know that, wh-” she laughed again. “Don’t go into the woods, take wide curves, keep your weight back when it gets steep.”  
“Got it.” Theon sounded dubious even to himself.   
“Don’t worry, Theon.” She put a hand on his shoulder when she said his name. “You’ll be fine. Look at the view!”  
He looked. It really was breathtaking, mountains as far as he could see in each direction, beautiful and deadly, slicing through the perfect blue sky. He looked back at her. Somehow her lips weren’t chapped, he noticed, despite the damage the dry high altitude air had wrought on his skin.   
They were nearing the end of the chairlift’s cable, and she squeezed his arm. “You’ll be great,” she assured, and they slid off the chair. She let go of him and took stock of her gear, lifting and adjusting her goggles. Theon went ahead, determined to begin the run as quickly as possible, scared he’d lose his nerve. The slope looked even steeper from above, but he closed his eyes, pushed the tips of his skis just over the edge, and pushed off. The wind hit his face like the wings of some huge bird and he felt himself entering something like a free fall. He couldn’t scream so he tensed his legs and tried to find some purchase on the powdery snow to turn sideways and move in a wider slalom. By the time he thought he could scream he was too focused on his feet to bother, and with every ounce of power in his body he twisted his legs so he was moving diagonally down the slope as it flattened out, and he reached the gentler part of the run with an intense pride bursting in his chest.   
Something flew past him, and he watched Sansa’s ponytail trace a fiery trail down the rather narrow trail, bordered on each side by the tall pine forest. He followed her, not matching her pace, but fast enough that by the time she dipped over the edge of the trail, below the yellow caution tape, and into the woods, he saw. She hadn’t said she was going to do that, in fact she’d specifically told him not to go into the woods. Something was wrong. All fear evaporated from his body and he turned sharply, going after her, over the icy edge of the groomed trail and into the untouched woods.   
“Sansa!” he yelled. He slowed as soon as he fell over the edge. The forest was dense, and the snow uneven and not packed down. A pair of snowshoes would have served him better, but skis were all he had so he braced himself against the trunks of the ruler straight pine trees and carefully followed the ski tracks in front of him. “Sansa!”  
The tracks stopped and Theon spotted a ski lodged in three feet of powder under a larger tree. His heart stopped.  
“Theon,” a voice called weakly. He rushed in the direction of it, but it seemed like the trees themselves were moving, disorienting him in his panic. “Down here.” It was definitely Sansa, and he finally spotted her bright blue jacket. It was torn, and goose down was spilling out of it onto the snow. She was wearing it where she lay, stuck between two trees that had somehow grown half a foot apart from one another.   
“Don’t move!” Theon urged. He hurriedly, clumsily, took off his skis and let his poles fall. On closer look she was totally stuck, and- he grit his teeth- her goggles had slipped off, dangling from her helmet, and there were tears on her face. “Are you hurt?” he knelt in front of her.   
She nodded. “I think-” she whimpered. “My leg.” Her lips were quivering.   
“Okay.” He stood up and surveyed her position quickly. Her torso and hips lay on one side of the two trees, her legs had gone between them and- oh. Her right calf was twisted too far left, so her foot was nearly pointing downward. “I don’t think I should move you,” he said.   
She nodded, now biting her lip to hold back sobs of pain. He knelt beside her, feeling panic return. “I’m gonna- I’m gonna call uh-” he racked his brain. Mr. and Mrs. Stark’s phones would be turned off, so would Robb’s and Jon’s. He didn’t know the ski patrol hotline either. He pulled out his phone and pulled off his gloves, shakily dialing 911. “I’m going to see if the dispatcher can get me the ski patrol,” he said, mostly for himself. His phone raised to his ear, he looked down at Sansa. He didn’t know how to talk to the kind of person she was on a good day, let alone during an emergency. The dial tone rang in his ear, and suddenly stopped. No service. Fuck, he felt stupid. This was the Rockies, obviously there wasn’t service.   
“Is anyone there?” Sansa asked.   
“No service,” he said. She didn’t respond. “Okay. Okay. Sansa, I’m going to walk up to the ski hill and wave someone over, I’ll tell them to bring the ski patrol.”  
“You can go get the ski patrol,” she said weakly.   
“I’m not leaving you that long.”   
“Theon, I’ll be fine.”  
“No, listen,” he began to pull off his jacket with his now freezing bare hands. “I’ll wait with you for them to come.” He folded his jacket into something resembling a puffy square. “Can you move your head?”  
She tried, rolling a few degrees on each side. “Yeah, why?”   
“Pillow,” he held up the jacket. “Lift your head up.”   
She did, “But you need a jacket.” He pushed it under her head, careful not to touch her.   
“I’ll be fine.” He hopped to his feet and looked around. The hill was visible through the trees to his right when facing down the mountain, and he glanced back at Sansa every few steps, careful not to lose sight of her once he got to the edge of the ski run.   
Someone in a purple jacket was skiing far above him, taking a long, lazy path from side to side. Theon waved his hands above his head. “Help!” he yelled. The skier seemed to notice him, and slowed down, coming to a complete stop a few metres from the side. They seemed like a guy, but Theon couldn’t be sure. Their goggles were opaque and they wore a ski mask over their mouth and nose.   
“Are you okay, dude?” The voice was definitely a guy’s. “You must be freezing.”   
“I’m good, my uh-” he wasn’t sure what to call Sansa. Definitely not friend, friend’s sister was weird. “Someone lost control and slid into the woods, I think her leg is broken.”  
“Fuck, dude. You need ski patrol.”   
“Yeah can you like, can you get them to come up here when you get to the bottom?”  
“Of course, of course. Can I give you my jacket or something in the meantime?”  
Theon was already turning to return to Sansa. “No, just go.” He ran back to Sansa once he saw their purple clad saviour zoom down the mountain. “How are you?” he asked.   
“Good. Take your jacket back, it’s too cold.”  
“No, your head should be above your body.”  
“Why?”  
“I don’t know, I think I read it somewhere.”  
She laughed, and the fist curled in Theon’s chest relaxed ever so slightly. He sat down in the snow next to her, keeping a safe distance of about four feet.   
“Talk to me, Theon,” she said.   
“About what?”  
“Anything. Distract me.”  
“Ok, uh- how’s uni?” Theon’s own words sounded dumb to him. How was it that he had no trouble smoothly sliding his way through a conversation with just about anyone but found so much trouble talking to Sansa Stark?  
“It’s fine. Don’t ask me about myself, talk about something!” she said through teeth gritted again in pain.   
“Ok, ok, before Christmas, before Robb went to your parents’ and I went to Asha’s, we tried to set up a Christmas tree in the apartment. Robb wanted to go to a Christmas tree farm-”  
“That’s what we always did growing up,” she cut in.   
“I’ve heard. But the nearest Christmas tree farm was like a three hour drive away so we just did what my dad always did and stole one from a church parking lot in the middle of the night.” He looked at her, and her face showed the shock he was expecting.  
“Theon! Bullshit, Robb did not do that with you,” she cried, a laugh at the edge of her voice.  
“On God, he did.” He smiled. “We set it up that night and he felt so guilty he couldn’t sleep, so in the morning he made me go to a service at the church and he put a hundred dollars in the collection.”  
Sansa’s laugh was strained by pain and position, but Theon thought it might have been the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.  
“How on Earth do you two live together? You’re insane!”  
“Maybe so, but I’m actually blackmailing him, I have a horrible secret about him and if he ever makes me find a different roommate I will tell the whole world,” he joked.   
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me something that’s true, Theon.”  
“When I was like, probably six or seven, I got a pet fish for Christmas and named it Brick.”  
“Why Brick?”  
“You tell me, I sure as hell don’t remember. Asha still brings it up to somehow prove I’m an idiot.”  
“How dare she, you’re the furthest possible thing from an idiot,” Sansa quipped back.  
“Watch your mouth Sansa, your brother’s dog is named after a month and he’s like some little chess playing supergenius.” Theon realized his mistake too late and winced.  
“Did you just call Summer a month? You really are an idiot,” Sansa said between giggles.  
“I would throw a snowball at you were you not injured.”  
“Go ahead and throw it, coward.”  
“Only a coward would attack a defenseless young laAH-” a ball of snow exploded in his face, and as he blinked the cold out of his eyes, he saw that Sansa’s arms were mobile enough to make and deploy snowballs. “Sansa Stark you are testing me.”  
She was laughing hysterically, and he laughed for a moment before he saw a flash of red through the trees. “I think they’re here,” he told her. He began to stand up.  
“Wait,” she said. “Come here.”  
Without thinking he approached her, and still without thinking let her reach an arm towards him, grab the back of his head, and pull him into a kiss.   
He couldn’t have said how long it lasted but her lips were somehow warm against his freezing ones, and then the two ski patrol officers were there, and he watched them work with concern as they strapped Sansa into a sled.   
“Give this to Theon,” she said, pointing at the folded up jacket she’d been using as a pillow. The shorter ski patrol officer handed it to him and he pulled it on, realising both that he’d been shaking from the cold, and that it smelled like Sansa’s shampoo.   
“Can you follow us down on your own skis?” the officer asked him. He nodded, and followed their slow trek from a hundred metres or so behind, once again watching Sansa’s red hair trace her path down the mountain.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
